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Notes -
As much as I enjoyed the first couple books and most of the short stories this has always been my biggest beef with ASOIAF. A multi-year long winter is a potentially civilization-ending event for a preindustrial society, made even worse given they occur at irregular intervals (limiting the ability to plan for it). This ought to have massive downstream effects on social organization, economics, military planing, and (ironically given Martin's complaints about Tolkien) Taxation, yet we don't see this. The Westeros we are presented with is basically just an ersatz renaissance Italy with dragons and ice liches.
Finally I've always found Martin's critique of Tolkien (he says that Aragorn was a good and virtuous king, but what about his tax policy?) to be somewhat facile. If Aragorn was virtuous i think it is reasonable to presume that his tax policy was at least moderately fair, and if he was a good king, i think its reasonable to presume that it was competently administered. What more do we need to know? LotR is a fantasy novel, not a economics treatise.
Martin may as well be hating on a fairy-tale for ending with "and they lived happily ever after", because no matter how happy Snow White and Prince Charming are together they will eventually grow old, suffer from back pain, and die. Like, what the fuck bro, that's not the point of the story, nor does it change anything.
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